The Dwyer Score- UFC Fight Night: Edson Barboza vs. Kevin Lee

For the third time in as many events, a battle between two top-ranked lightweights headlines a UFC card as Edson Barboza (19-5 MMA, 13-5 UFC) squares off against Kevin Lee (16-3 MMA, 9-3 UFC).

An impressive win for either man could put them straight back into the title picture as both fighters look to rebound from high-profile defeats against championship caliber opponents.

Let’s take a look at the recent results of the two men in Saturday night’s main event:

Barboza followed a unanimous decision victory over Gilbert Melendez in 2016 with a spectacular flying knee KO of Beneil Dariush last March. He then lost a clear one-sided decision to current UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov in December.

Barboza has never lost two consecutive bouts in his professional MMA career.

Lee scored back-to-back rear-naked choke victories over Francisco Trinaldo and Michael Chiesa last year, snapping their respective seven-fight and three-fight winning streaks. He then faced Tony Ferguson for the interim UFC lightweight title, coming up short in a third-round submission defeat.

Like Barboza, Lee has never lost back-to-back fights in his career.

Here’s a look at how these two fighters fared when competing against common opponents shared throughout their careers. On the left of the graphic, you’ll see how Barboza fared against any shared opponents, and on the right, you’ll see Lee’s results against the same men.

The two men share just one common opponent; Tony Ferguson.

Ferguson defeated both men via submission, catching Barboza in a D’Arce choke in the second round of their 2015 Fight of the Year nominee, almost two years before the aforementioned third-round triangle choke of Lee.

The Dwyer Score

Each event, I calculate a ‘Dwyer Score’ for the card. It essentially gives a numeric value to the momentum of fighters competing at any one event. I do this by assigning a figure to each fighter’s current streak; a fighter on a five-fight winning streak contributes +5 to an event’s score, whilst a fighter on a two-fight losing streak contributes -2 to the score. Only UFC results are considered and a fighter coming off a no-contest, a draw, or a bout with another promotion has a streak of 0. When you tally up the scores for every fighter on a card, you get a total for the event- the ‘Dwyer Score.’ This score does not claim to predict or measure the quality or excitement of any one card, but it does give you an idea of the general momentum of fighters heading into a specific event. The graphic to the above-right displays some of the highest-scoring events of all time, to help give some context to this score.

About the Author:

Nick Dwyer.
Nick is a 27-year-old MMA writer who has been part of #TeamEverlast for 2 years now, contributing weekly 'Dwyer Score' columns as well as statistical analyses and fighter interviews. Follow Nick on Twitter at @NickDwyerMMA.